


As Old As You Were (It was Never As Old As This)

by disarm_d



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 18:59:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13130004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disarm_d/pseuds/disarm_d
Summary: “You make me remember how it feels to be that young.”





	As Old As You Were (It was Never As Old As This)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Broadripple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Broadripple/gifts).



> For Broadripple who asked for _"Sidney Crosby is stealing Nate's youth and energy," crack treated seriously_. What a great prompt! I hope you like it. 
> 
> Big thanks to threeturn who was kind enough to help beta this for me on a really tight timeline! <3

Nate was twenty-two years old and he had run out of time for his youngests. Youngest guy drafted to the Avs. Youngest player to win the Calder. Youngest Avalanche to score a hat trick. 

At the time, it hadn’t seemed like much to be the youngest anything. He liked it because it was as if he had won, sort of, and he liked winning. But when he was doing it, he was around other guys who were basically doing the same thing, and he hadn’t felt younger than them. He’d felt like another guy. 

It wasn’t until later that he realized how much it had mattered to be young -- that people knew something he hadn’t. They knew how it felt not to be young any more. 

\--

Nate was nineteen years old and he had won gold for Team Canada with Sidney Crosby. His whole face was numb from how hard he was smiling. Not numb -- sore, maybe. He was riding on top of his body though, surfing adrenalin and giddiness and a joy so fierce it could melt ice. He loved every single person in the world. In the crowd, he could see Sidney smiling. He stood out and he didn’t. He was same as all the rest of the guys: none of them would be there if their teams had made any kind of playoff run. But he was still _Sidney Crosby_ and it was such a mind trip. 

Sidney noticed Nate, and grinned. He had already been smiling, but now it was a smile directed towards Nate, so it was automatically different. More special. 

In that moment, they were a team. They were the same. The eight years between them, all the hardware Sidney had collected, his Stanley Cup, his Olympic golds… everything he had that Nate so desperately wanted didn’t matter in that moment. Celebrating the same victory was the great equalizer. 

\--

Nate was seven years old and he had Crosby’s poster on his wall. 

\--

Nate was seventeen years old and he had Sidney Crosby’s phone number. He wasn’t going to text him with nothing to say, because that was weird. They weren’t friends. They just trained together in the summer sometimes. He had Sidney Crosby’s phone number because sometimes they needed to make logistical arrangements. But he’d been craving the hangover crepe from Naked Crepes in Wolfville, and he could text one of his buddies back home about it, but _also_ he could conceivably text Sidney Crosby about it because they were east coast buddies, and Sidney Crosby would probably get it. 

That was a stretch though. That was a stretch of a reason to text Sidney Crosby. That was buddies, and he and Sidney Crosby were not buddies. 

But Nate had his phone number. 

He hated feeling this young. He was the worst kind of young because he was old enough to be expected to act like a normal human person, but he didn’t know shit. When he was actually old, like twenty-five, or maybe even thirty, although that seemed beyond ancient right now, he’d be used to talking to all sort of people. 

He wrote a text. Deleted it. Wrote a shorter one. Deleted it. Replied to a few of the different group chats that he was on, because that was easy. 

Wrote another text to Sidney Crosby. Sent it. 

His hands were sweating. It wasn’t the most nervous he had ever been, because his entry into the NHL didn’t depend on this; there were no cameras there to pick up his humiliation. But his heart was jackhammering and his stomach kind of felt like the time that he and some buddies had a contest to see who could drink the most milk. 

He had more than half a boner. Should he jerk off? Maybe. He’d already jerked off once this morning, but he could go again. 

He waited, but Sidney Crosby did not text him back. He waited a while longer, jumping each time his phone buzzed and then ended up being just another comment from one of his group texts. Well this was dumb. He wasn’t going to wait any more. He’d run instead. 

He put on sneakers and changed out of sweats and into shorts. He left his phone at home, which seemed like a good idea right up until the second he locked his front door, and then he felt a full body compulsion to go back inside and get it. But no. He was going to run. 

He took off in a full sprint straight away. People were supposed to warm up or whatever, but it never mattered much if he skipped it. His body did what he needed it to do. 

He finished his run faster than usual, running like he was being chased. He got back home and he thought, _I should get some water first_ , just to try out what that felt like. Imagine having enough control over his own impulses that he could take all the time to go to the kitchen and get a drink before checking his phone. Yeah, right. 

Instead, he went straight for his phone without even pausing to take off his running shoes. 

There were so many messages, like fuck boys, calm it down maybe. But, then, buried between all of the nonsense: a reply from Sidney Crosby.

Nate unlocked his phone. Pulled up Sidney Crosby in his message list. The message was really there. Sidney Crosby had written him back. 

Nate was so fucking happy he didn’t know what to do with himself. He started jumping, just lightly on the balls of his feet at first, but that felt good so he did it more, and more, until he was doing proper box jumps, just pushing up and up, jumping as high as he could. It was so good to be moving. Sidney had texted him back. It wasn’t about scheduling their next workout. It was about friend stuff. They were friends, basically. This was what friends did. Nate had been drafted and he was going to play in the fucking NHL and he was friends with Sidney Crosby.

Nate looked at his phone, still clutched tightly in his hand. The message was still there. It really happened. 

He lowered his phone away from his face and jumped around some more. 

\-- 

Nate was eighteen years old, and Sidney had won the Hart, Lindsay, and Art Ross. 

“You’re more excited about that than about your Calder,” Sidney said, laughing. He missed his mouth with the champagne flute and some of it dripped down his chin. 

“No,” Nate said. He was trying to seem sober, but all he was really accomplishing was having a very loud voice. They were in Sidney’s room at the Bellagio, and Nate couldn’t remember where they were supposed to be heading to next. They’d come back after the NHL awards. Nate didn’t even know how that happened. He was just chilling, eating sushi, sitting beside Sid, and then suddenly dinner was over and they were back in Sidney’s room. They were supposed to be meeting up with people, Nate was pretty sure, but he didn’t care if they actually made it out. This was already the best night of his life, probably. For now anyway. One day he’d win the cup (but then he pressed his fingers to the wood of the bedside table immediately just for having the thought), and that would for sure be the best day of his life. It was the possible-best night of his life _so far_.

“No?” Sidney repeated. He laughed again. His face looked really asymmetrical when he laughed, and Nate loved it. Or basically he liked Sidney’s face and he loved Sidney’s hockey and he loved all hockey and he kind of loved Vegas but mostly he just loved right now, this moment, sitting beside Sidney on the king-sized bed in this monster hotel room. 

“You’re spilling,” Nate said said, trying and failing to steady the stem of Sidney’s champagne flute as it made another attempted journey towards Sidney’s mouth. No, damn, now there was champagne on Nate’s wrist.

He bent to lick it off, but somehow Sidney’s head was bent as well. It didn’t just happen. There was a moment when Nate thought, _We could kiss_ , and then he leaned forward some more to make sure it would happen. There was still the decision but it felt like he was swept up in the night and the awards and the unwavering focus of Sidney’s attention, like everything was just happening, and all Nate had to do was make sure it didn’t stop. 

Sidney did not use very much tongue when he kissed, and it took Nate a little while to realize that meant he should probably also stop using so much tongue. Sidney seemed to like it though. He let Nate kiss his neck. He nipped at the soft lobe of Nate’s ear and that was a crazy turn-on. Nate never knew he even had nerves there. It was strange to think that there were things about his body that he didn’t know, and that he didn’t know that he didn’t know them.

“You wanna take your dick out?” Sidney asked, and Nate did want that. He really, really, really wanted that. 

Sidney licked his hand, put it on Nate’s dick. Nate managed to stay quiet, but he couldn’t stay still, thrusting up into Sidney’s grip, shivering when Sidney tightened his hand like Nate needed. He squirmed on the bed, and tried to convince himself to close his eyes but he couldn’t stop staring. Sidney Crosby was jerking him off. 

“It was a hell of a season for you,” Sidney said.

“Oh, fuck, I’m going to come,” Nate said. Sidney started laughing again, but that didn’t do anything to slow Nate down. 

“You’re always going to remember this night,” Sidney said while Nate wiped the come off his belly. 

_It was just a hand job_ , Nate thought, but he didn’t say it because he knew Sidney was right. 

“Your rookie season is like… you’ll never remember any other seasons so clearly. It’s all your firsts. Everything starts to blend together after that.”

“Right,” Nate said, because, right, Sidney hadn’t actually meant the hand job. He’d sort of lucked out of embarrassing himself there, but then he went and negated that by saying, “I’d probably also remember sucking your cock, if you wanted to, like, take your pants off now.”

“Have you done this before?” Sidney asked, even as he started working on the fastenings of his pants. 

“Not with you,” Nate said, but pretty soon that wasn’t true any more. 

Right after coming, Sidney fell asleep, but Nate couldn’t. He felt like he could have run sprints up and down the entire strip. He felt like he could scale that fake Eiffel Tower down the block. 

Sidney rolled over, reached for Nate in his sleep, and woke up just enough to blink sleepily when he realized that Nate was sitting up. 

“What does it feel like to win the Stanley Cup?” Nate asked. He’d been good for a long time, just sitting silently while Sidney slept. 

“Excruciating,” Sidney said. His voice was so thick with sleep that Nate almost didn’t understand the word. He opened his mouth, but Sidney’s eyes were already fluttering closed again, so Nate just chewed on his lower lip instead, stayed quiet. 

\--

Nate was nineteen years old and he’d won gold at Worlds and now they were all touring around Europe and it was fucking awesome except that he was so fucking tired all the time.

Sidney’s age was wearing off on Nate. Nate had been annoyed the first couple of nights, because yeah it was cool to room with Sid but like that guy wanted to go to sleep so damn early, and then he wanted to wake up early, and he wanted to read before he went to bed, and he didn’t want Nate waking him up by coming in after he’d already slept. Nate had kind of fought against him at first, considered trading rooms with someone or just getting a separate room of his own, but they weren’t sharing because they couldn’t afford their own rooms, they were sharing because it was a trip, and the point was for everyone to get to hang out, and Nate being a dick who couldn’t work it out with his buddy wasn’t part of that plan. 

It had been four days, and he must have gotten used to Sidney’s schedule, because he realized that he was already getting tired, even though it was only half past eight. That was early, even for Sidney, who seemed to be getting more and more energetic as the trip went on. He started out low, probably still banged up from the season although he wouldn’t talk about it in any detail with him, plus whatever new damage from the tournament. Nate had seen dark splotches across Sidney’s torso when he was changing, but they had already seemed to heal. Maybe he really had just need to get caught up on sleep and let his body do its thing. 

That didn’t explain why Nate was so exhausted though. They hadn’t even got to the restaurant until nearly eight. Their food hadn’t arrived. Most of the guys were just on to their second drink. Nate was still nursing his first, and actually wondering if he was too tired to keep drinking before the food arrived. That was an insane thought to be having. The only time he had to watch how much he drank without food was… never, basically, but sometimes trainers would remind him about it when he was in his heaviest training schedule and on a really low carb phase of his diet, but that was like hardly ever. There were a few times that he came back from the gym and had beer instead of water, and that hadn’t been the best, but he’d still been _fine_. It was strange to think that his body could handle something and handle something and one day just not be able to handle it anymore.

He felt okay after eating, but not amazing. They went back to their rooms because Josi wanted to do his hair, and he’d said they all needed to change or he wouldn’t be seen in public with them, which was pretty rude, but in fairness Tyson was wearing shorts that were old sweatpants he’d cut the legs off of himself. 

“I don’t think I’m going to make it out again,” Nate said, throwing himself onto his bed. Sidney took off his polo shirt and put on another polo shirt. 

“Come on,” he said, bumping the foot of Nate’s bed with his knee. The bed was huge but Nate could still feel the movement. 

“I’m so gassed,” Nate complained. “I just want to, like. Sit in the hot tub.”

Sidney’s face did nothing, but something in his tone changed. “You’ll get rested up,” Sidney said. 

“This sucks,” Nate said. “I’m already past my prime.”

“No,” Sidney said, the weird tone still in his voice. “You’ve got so many years ahead of you.” Sidney sounded rapturous. “So much _time_.”

Nate looked at Sidney. They hadn’t hooked up this trip, and Nate didn’t think they were going to. They hooked up sometimes, and even though it was completely unpredictable, Nate surprised even himself by staying chill about it. They hooked up when it made sense; he got that. It didn’t really make sense to hook up during a guys’ trip. No one was hooking up, although they kept trying to get Tyson to hit on girls, just because the suggestion always made him so mad and that was hilarious. 

The look Sidney gave him was one that would usually correspond with blowjobs. Sidney, standing at the foot of the bed. Nate stretched out. It felt like his body was reacting on a lag. He wasn’t hard, but the longer he lay there watching Sidney, the more his body started getting into it. 

He ended up rallying after all, heading out with all the guys. He danced a bit. Drank less than he usually would, but it still felt like a lot. 

Nate fell asleep almost immediately after they got back and then woke up the next morning before Sidney did. 

In his sleep, Sidney looked ageless, but he also looked like a hockey player. There was a wear to his face that only came from repeated hits with sticks and fists and pucks. He was entirely still, and there was nothing other than the obvious mass of his body beneath the sheets to show how strong he was. How fast. 

Nate became abruptly worried that he would wake up. If Sidney woke, they’d have to get up, and Nate still felt exhausted. It didn’t matter how much he slept, his body always wanted him to sleep a little more. It never used to feel like that. His body still had the same drive to go and move and _win_ , but now he felt like he had to push himself in a way that he never used to notice. 

He wondered how Sidney did it. The drive to come back from the jaw and the concussion and the other concussion and countless hits and slashes and crosschecks. He had already won almost everything a person could win, and still he kept pushing. Nate stared at him, and it was impossible to separate the longing he felt: for Sidney, to be Sidney, to have what Sidney had. Nate had spent his entire youth following in Sidney’s footsteps, and that wasn’t even a thing to regret: anyone would give anything to have some of _that_. 

The only regret was that after this -- after Sidney woke up, and they got on with the day, with the trip, got back home, back to the regular season and the euphoria of winning something together faded and things went back to normal, it would be clear how far behind Nate had gotten. He was trailing further and further. Sidney was so far ahead that it seemed possible that one day he might lap Nate entirely. 

\--

Nate was twenty-one years old and on the worst team in the entire NHL. The Oilers got McDavid first overall, and this year they were in the playoffs. The Leafs got Matthews first overall, and this year they were in the playoffs. The Penguins got Crosby first overall, and it looked like this year Nate was going to be going to another of Sidney’s cup parties. 

The Avs got Nate first overall, and it was a mathematical impossibility for them to make the playoffs as of about January. 

Nate watched game after game after game on the TV, completely immobile except when he ran slow fingers over his dog’s soft head, until his dog was sick of being petted and had slunk away to hide under the coffee table. 

But Nate kept watching TV. He felt like he needed to rest up, even though the only guys who actually needed rest at this point were the ones still playing hockey. Nate couldn’t remember the last time he felt rested. It had to be before the last time the played the Pens. Sidney had ignored him as always during the game, but they’d met up for a quick drink afterwards, and Nate hadn’t had any trouble staying up until four am with Sidney. Sidney had wanted to get fucked, and he must have liked it because he was so sweet with Nate afterwards -- touching his hair, kissing over his neck. 

Nate got hard again, and Sidney had been first surprised, then delighted. 

“I remember being your age,” Sidney said, teasing the head of Nate’s cock with the tip of his finger. “You make me remember how it feels to be that young.” 

Nate thought, _I would give anything to know how you feel now_ , but he didn’t want to distract Sidney. It was so nice to have Sidney’s attention, to go back to this intimacy after being treated like any other opponent. 

“Sometimes I think it would have been easier for you if we weren’t born in the same place,” Sidney said, and it was such a strange thing that Nate’s attention was momentarily distracted away from his cock. What would it have been like to not have grown up with Sidney as both the sun and the shadow he could not get out of? He tried to imagine a world where neither of them played hockey, but that was impossible. There was nothing left to them without hockey. 

He remembered looking at the poster of Sid the Kid on his wall in the morning when he was awake before sunrise, waiting for his mom to finish her coffee so she could drive him to the rink. If Sid could do it, he could do it. 

“It wouldn’t have been easier,” Nate said to the Sid lying in bed with him. It was only hard now that he realized there were a great many things that Sid could do that Nate may not ever accomplish. He imagined instead not having Sidney now: of escaping that constant reminder of how far he still had to go. The albatross of how little he had earned for how hard he’d worked. 

He wouldn’t give that up either. Sidney was worth anything.

“Do you think we still would have become friends if we were the same age?” Nate asked, but Sidney was already crawling down the bed to suck Nate off, so he couldn’t talk anymore.

Nate had been fucking drained the entire week after that, only remembered that now because he’d made a joke about Sidney getting him sick, and Sidney had been a huge dick about it. Like, yeah, you’re the greatest hockey player in the world, obviously you’re too good to host the common cold. 

Nate hadn’t gotten sick though, had just stayed drained, a little low, like every time he got less than five hours of sleep in the night it was building up a massive sleep debt that he couldn’t chip away it, not on the nights when he got a cool seven hours, not even on the days off when he stayed in bed all morning even though he couldn’t sleep deeply, just because he wanted to try to squeeze out a full nine hours in bed. 

So it hadn’t been anything he’d caught from Sidney after all, just a new baseline of tiredness that never went away. 

His dog whined at the door. He should take her for a walk, but he just opened up the sliding glass door and let her out in the backyard instead. There was another game to watch. Maybe he’d walk her after. 

\--

Nate was going to be twenty-two in a couple of months, and Sidney was faster than he was. 

“I can fucking run faster than you can,” Nate said, so irritated that he couldn’t even come up with a chirp, just that incoherent frustration of losing. “It’s just the fucking turns.” 

Sidney chucked, shook his head. Looked up at Nate while his head was still bent down. He seemed like a little boy who had been out playing in the garden all day. He seemed like he belonged in a life-sized poster to be hung on a bedroom wall. He seemed like a man, like an actual _man_ in the way that Nate so rarely felt that he was a man yet. Nate didn’t know how he could look like so many things at the same time. He closed his eyes. 

Sidney took a sip of water, catching his breath. When Andy called them to start the drill over again, he zipped into Nate’s space just long enough to whisper, “Loser gets a blowjob,” before he trotted over to the start line. 

Nate didn’t realize until later, like way way later after he’d come in Sidney’s mouth and Sidney had spit it onto Nate’s belly, which wasn’t as gross as it seemed like it would be, because then he ran his fingers through the mess and used it to finger Nate while Nate was still panting, all twitchy and overstimulated. It wasn’t until after that, after the shower they took together to clean up, after the late-night snack. After Nate had seen Sidney to the door, and Sidney was probably back home and settled into his own bed. 

After all that, Nate realized what an asshole fucking bet it was. Sidney had known he was going to win. Sidney was placating him. 

And he’d done such a good job that Nate hadn’t even minded, or at least he hadn’t minded as much as was humanly possible given his pathological compulsion to win. 

Nate lay in his own bed, and tried to visualized Sidney’s body there beside him. It was both easy and impossible to do. He could clearly picture Sidney’s image, but it was like imagining that there was a billboard in bed with him. Larger than life. Too bright to really look at. But that was also what it was like when Sidney was physically there beside him. It was like he was never looking directly at Sidney, just at a reflection of him on the surface of a very still lake. 

\--

Nate was twenty-two years old and he was playing on the eighth worst team in the league, but they were going to win tonight, and that counted for something. 

It was halfway through the season, and his conditioning was good, he was doing the stuff he was supposed to, but he ached all of the time. It was worst when he woke up in the morning. Even now, in the middle of a game, the slash he took at the start of the first was throbbing in a way that kept sliding into the front of his mind before he pushed it away again. His focus was all over the place. He went back and forth from being able to hear every sound in the arena, the full cacophony, to hearing nothing but the sounds of his own skates and the thuds of bodies bouncing off each other. 

Nate briefly detoured to the mirrors on his way back from the shower. He was doing press that night, and last time he was on camera, his hair looked like he’d stuck his finger in an electrical socket, so he was going to at least check that he had his part in the right place this time. 

He used the edge of his towel to wipe the steam off the mirror and in the brief moment the mirror was clear before it started to fog over again, Nate stared at himself. He didn’t recognize the face in front of him, not in the entire time the mirror was still visibly reflective. He wiped at it again, and then a third time. 

His skin looked… loose, was the only word that seemed to fit. It looked like someone had tried to glue a mask onto his head but they hadn’t done a good job and it was now coming off. The bags under his eyes puffed out almost further than his actual eyeballs. The crease between his under eye and the top of his cheek was cut sharply, and tired skin drooped over the crease. 

His forehead was bruised in a line from his helmet from where he’d been boarded, but it also seemed like there were lines in the skin. His cheeks were rough with pockmarks and scars. His lips were chapped and, when he bit absently at the edge of rough skin, bleeding. He could also taste blood on the inside of his mouth where his cheek had gotten trapped between the glass and his mouthguard. 

He lifted his hand to wipe at the mirror again, but ended up touching his face instead, trailing his fingers across his cheeks, pushing at the skin to feel the move of it over top of his cheekbones. He touched the bridge of his nose: crooked, aching under the pressure of his fingertips. 

EJ walked by and gave him a friendly slap with a coiled up towel. Nate was abruptly aware of the sounds of the room, rocked suddenly back into reality. 

“I look fucking rough,” he said to no one in particular. 

“You should moisturize,” Tyson said earnestly. 

Nate just blinked and let the room take care of it for him. 

“Buddy,” Gabe said. “You’re making it too easy.”

“Oh, like it’s so outrageous to use face cream,” Tyson said, and then the room drowned him out with booing.

\--

Nate was twenty-two years old and his elbow clicked every time he bent his arm. When he lay down in bed at night, his hips ached and his knee cracked when he rolled from side to side. 

\--

Nate was twenty-two and he felt like he was sixty. 

“Does this get easier?” he asked, lying on a grass field staring up into the sun. Or not into the sun, but just to the side of it. Near the sun, but not directly at it. Just where it’s safe, just where he could stand it. He was still trying to catch his breath after their last round of sprints. 

Sidney was standing, stretching, bouncing on the soles of his feet, ready to go, ready to go again. His quads flexed and the huge muscle looked like a snake moving beneath his skin. He looked like a mountain, jacked, carved of rock. He was alert, bright and lit from within. Nate looked at him and then looked away again, his eyes skipping around, past Sidney looming over him, past the sun overhead in the sky. He let his gaze drop down. There was his own body, his limbs like rubber in the dirt. 

“Get up,” Sidney said, reaching for Nate’s hand. He yanked and Nate flew up, suddenly upright on his own shaky legs. His head spun. He wiggled his head from side to side, trying to find his equilibrium. His neck cracked.

“Let’s go again,” Sidney said, and took off. 

Nate tried to follow after him.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://disarmd.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
